Well, There's Defi, and there are NFTs. But is this all? We're in 2021 with powerful tech and finance leapfrogging with Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology. Cryptoverse has redeemed itself as it's not merely a speculative asset or drug/dirty money but something of actual value and utility. This post sheds some light on an unpopular area of utilization of crypto, Trade Finance. Prevailing Problems with Trade Finance are 60%

of SME trade finance requests are denied and 1.5 trillion USD is the resulting global trade finance gap. The core reason behind these problems is Trust. “An importer and exporter, if they don’t know each other, they start from an element of mistrust. The importer doesn’t want to pay unless he sees the merchandise and the exporter doesn’t want to ship unless he sees the money. So one of the two parties has to take a risk." - Roberto Mancone

SMEs don't have the liquidity to produce/send goods upfront. Banks don't trust the SMEs that they'll be able to pay back, the buyer doesn't trust the vendor with the goods hence cannot pay upfront. Blockchain-based projects appropriate the Assets Tokenization(NFTs), Decentralized Exchanges, Trustless Liquidity, and Debt MarketPlaces(based on smart contracts) to bridge the gap in trade finance.

There are some projects already out there that have solved these problems and are gaining institutional attention. Centrifuge TinLake and Persistence(Comdex app) are two such brilliant projects. The former is focused on the west while the latter is focused more on Asia. Persistence is based on a tendermint based chain(cosmos) and Tinlake is substrate-based. You can understand the importance of these by this post.

I strongly believe in the coming future we'll be seeing more attention from retail and enterprise investors. Comdex application is already live with real enterprises trading commodities, with already $50M+ in trading volumes. Development and more advancement in this segment are unavoidable. Open to discussions and criticism

many of my friends do this, speculating on prices and trade profits. Trading is kinda of a soothing activity at times under stress. Checking out portfolio multiple times a day and just to distract away from problem in hand.

With the onset of 2021 and ETH 2.0 still underway, the challenges associated with popular protocols like bitcoin and ethereum, 'The Scalability Trilemma' i.e The challenges of developing a blockchain solution that enables scalability, decentralization, and security, without compromising either one. Some blockchains like Polkadot, Cosmos, and NEAR focused on solving these challenges. Here we will look at successful and emerging projects based on tender mint chain(cosmos ) with a lot of potential to grow from an investment and fundamentals standpoint that could disrupt due to the problems these solve.

KAVA [Launched]

Category: Finance

Kava is a cross-chain Defi platform offering collateralized loans and stablecoins to users of major crypto assets (BTC, XRP, BNB, ATOM, etc.). It is supported by over 100+ business entities around the world, including prominent crypto funds and major crypto projects like Ripple and Cosmos. The platform features two tokens: KAVA, governance and staking token responsible for securing the network and voting on key parameters; and USDX, an algorithmically maintained stable coin backed by crypto asset collateral.

Fundraising Goal: $3M

Tokens Available for sale: 6.52%

Market Cap: 290M

Returns since ICO

10.91x USD

1x ETH

1.73x BTC

Terra (LUNA) [Launched]

Category: Finance

A price-stable cryptocurrency designed for mass adoption. We are building financial infrastructure for the next generation of decentralized applications.

Token Sale: $0.8

Fundraising Goal: $10M Tokens

Token Available for sale:20%

Market Cap: $2.7B

Terra raised a massive $32M back in 2018 by well known VCs including Polychain Capital, FBG Capital, Hashed, 1kx, Kenetic Capital, Arrington XRP

PERSISTENCE(XPRT) [Yet to be launched]

Category: Finance

Persistence bridges Defi and Traditional Finance by facilitating borrowing of Cryptoassets using Real-world assets as collateral.

As per Persistence’s Blogs, they are focused on two folded audiences:

Institutional: Asset-Based Lending P2P Trade Finance use case through the Comdex dApp for institutional ‘physical commodity’ traders and trade financiers

Crypto-native: Securitization of Debt (Pooling of debt) and Stablecoin Lending Platform to give exposure to real-world income-generating assets to crypto-native stakeholders

Persistence one raised $3.7M from industry heavyweights VCs (some of them also backed Terra) including Arrington XRP, Woodstock, AU21, NGC Ventures, Spark Capital, IOSG, Incrypt, 3 commas, and also from Alameda Research (folks behind FTX), Terra.

Also Received a grant from ICF (Interchain Foundation). These guys also ran very successful stakedrop campaign across multiple networks such as Kava, Terra and Matic.

I feel since the late 2020s, and the beginning of 2021 institutional attention has been multiple times due to celebrity attention like Elon Musk and with the massive bull, run tokens have grown 10-20x. With institutional app already implemented and successful and massive developer activity on both crypto and institutional side. This project has the potential to be a massive success as well. Although they have recently mentioned their ICO in their recent tweet. https://twitter.com/PersistenceOne/status/1358807722548936708

It's yet to be disclosed when it will happen.

These projects could explode in 2021 considering their tokenomics, functionalities and utility.